Saturday, August 13, 2016

Mobile Ecosystem

Today’s phones do everything: take pictures, give directions, play music. So why can’t they project movies? Seven years after writing about phone projectors, Tim Green is still waiting to own one…Two years ago my family had a dream. We would build a cinema in our back garden.

OK, not a real cinema with seats and ushers and exorbitant popcorn. But somewhere we could sit on summer evenings and project movies in the muggy darkness.

In nine years, the smartphone has taken control of everything – alarm clock, diary, camera, camcorder, satnav, map, MP3 player. The projector remains out of reach.

If only there was a solution. If only I could stream Italian realist cinema to my 4G enabled iPhone and throw the pictures on the wall. No long wires. No connectivity issues. Well, I can’t. Which is disappointing because I was writing about projectors coming to phones seven years ago.

In 2009, pico tech was shrinking enough to sit inside handsets, and the phone makers were all over it. The breakthrough projector phone was the LG Expo, but even smaller OEMs like Micromax and Spice were trying it.